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This book addresses a growing concern as to why Psychology, now more than a hundred years after becoming an independent research area, does not yet meet the basic requirements of a scientific discipline on a par with other sciences such as physics and biology. These requirements include: agree ment on definition and delimitation of the range of features and properties of the phenomena or subject matter to be investigated; secondly, the development of concepts and methods which unambiguously specify the phenomena and systematic investigation of their features and properties. A third equally important requirement, implicit in the first two, is exclusion from enquiry of all other mattes with which the discipline is not concerned. To these requirements must then be added the development of basic assumptions about the nature of what is under investigation, and of principles to account for its properties and to serve as a guide as to what are relevant questions to ask and theories to develop about them.

Principles of Cognition, Language and Action: Essays on the Foundations of a Science of Psychology

Foreword. Acknowledgements. Part I: The Development of a Science of Psychology. 1. Introduction to Assumptions and Arguments. 2. Alternative Assumptions and Principles. 3. Problem of Explanations and Theories of Visual Perception. 4. Consequences for Perception Psychology and Epistemology. Part II: The Relation Between Language, Cognition and Reality. 5. The Relation Between Language and Reality. 6. Language, Concepts and Reality. 7. Situations, Action and Knowledge. 8. Scientific and Other Descriptions of Reality. 9. Physicalism and Psychology. 10. Context, Content and Reference - The Case for Beliefs and Intentionality. 11. Propositions about Real as Opposed to Fictitious Things. 12. Why There still Cannot be a Causal Theory of Content. 13. The Relation Between Language, Cognition and Reality I. 14. The Relation Between Language, Cognition and Reality II. 15. The Relation between Language, Cognition and Reality III. Part III: Identity. 16. Identity and Identification - Same and Different. Part IV: Persons. 17. Some Consequences of Epistemological Idealism. 18. Wittgenstein's Theories of Language. 19. The External World and the Internal. 20. The Inter-Subjectivity of Knowledge and Language. 21. The Conditions for People to be and Function as Persons: Summary and Consequences. References. Index.